Wheel Update
Instructor: Jeff Oestreich
July 8–11, 2010

The goal of this four-day workshop is to take the 7,000-year-old wheel-throwing process and bring it into the 21st century. Participants will explore many ways of taking the symmetry of a wheel thrown functional pot to another place. Students will learn new skills, consideration of details, and above all, look outside and inside themselves for inspiration, to produce a body of personal work. Daily demonstrations on faceting, darting, cutting and reassembling, along with slide shows and critiques will address various aspects of the functional pot. Participants will leave the workshop with new skills and ways of working, and bisqued artwork.

Jeff Oestreich received his BA from Bemidji State University in Bemidji, Minnesota, and the University of Minnesota. His formal education was followed up with an apprenticeship at the Leach Pottery in St Ives, England, from 1969–1971. Throughout the 1980s he taught at universities around the U.S., and has since returned to full-time studio work in Taylor Falls, Minnesota, where he has lived for the past 35 years. He continues to exhibit and teach short-term classes both here and abroad.